Cultural Distinctiveness and Historical Continuity

I had a great day yesterday.  A very engaging and productive time at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.  Some good responses to my presentation on Confucianism and soft power, and even better, broad-ranging conversation afterward.  Much to think about and absorb and, eventually, blog.  In the evening I had a fun time with a diverse gathering of journalists and others at the Foreign Correspondent's Club here.  My talk to them was a bit different that the more academic presentation that morning, and I was able to float a variety of ideas to an informed audience.  And the martinis later with a couple of former students in a bar in the mansion that had been the home of a Shanghai gangster was a great way to cap the last night in Shanghai.

Throughout my short time here, one of the ideas I have been raising is that China is not now a Confucian society.  This notion has been met with mixed responses here.  Some Chinese, scholars and students alike, agree that modernization has transformed China to such an extent that it is very difficult to say that consistent Confucian behavior is common here (and by "Confucianism" I mean a rigorous moral practice).  Materialist instrumentalism (or instrumental materialism) is just too powerful an economic and social dynamic to maintain the humanist sociality of Confucianism.  That's not to say there are no traces or expressions of Confucian-like intentions and actions, there are.  But they do not sufficiently add up at the level of society and economy to justify calling this place a "Confucian society."

I obviously need to refine and hone this argument.  And I will be aided in that endeavor by the points made by those here who have disagreed with me.  Negative responses came from students and scholars and they were offered with varying degrees of fervency.  One Chinese student at Beijing Foreign Studies University was quite direct and comprehensive in her rejection of my suggestion that China is not a Confucian society.  I believe that I can rebut most of her points, and I will be thinking through them in the next few days, but here I want to step back and think about a larger issue.

Why do some Chinese very much want to believe that China is a Confucian society?  What's at stake in that conception?

Various people here mentioned the familiar point that China is facing a crisis of faith or a vacuum of principles.  The very rapid and extensive economic and social and cultural change is destabalizing.  Personal and collective identites are called into question.  And in that context, reaching for some grounding in cultural distinctiveness and historical continuity can provide some comfort and confidence. 

I think this is generally true.  But I don't think this is a particularly Chinese phenomenon.  All countries and cultures that face globalized modernity face the same problem.  In the US, the "culture wars" are essentially the same thing: people debating what it means to be "American" in the face of continual and fundamental social and cultural change.  It is generally the more conservative resopnse to change that reaches for cultural distsinctiveness (which in the US takes the form of American excetionalism) and historical continuity.  That what conservatism means: to conserve something essential about social organization and cultural identity. 

What is unique about China now is the speed and extent of change.  Everything is moving faster here, faster than the US, faster than many people feel comfortable with.  And perhaps that is why the conservative response, which here includes the neo-traditionalist re-invention of Confucianism, is so prominent in certain quarters.  But, however dizzying the pace of change here, I don't think that the yearning for cultral distinctiveness and historical continuity is all that different from the cultural dynamics of the US.

Paradoxically, the two countries may be more alike than either might realize, and their similarity lies in their efforts to define and conserve cultural difference in a world of inescapable change.... We all look to assert what is culturally distinctive about our place in that world, and the historical continuities that link us to the past of our place in the world...

Something to think about as I face a twelve hour flight back to the US, and then another short flight and car ride home. 

In the meantime, here's a funny post card from Tai Kung lu; the caption reads something like: "today's recommendation" or, maybe "recommended daily."

Comments

[Porfiriy]

Where do you think the government plays a role in this Confucian self-vision? While I think your observation that many countries today are trying to fill a postmodern "principles vacuum," another thing that distinguishes China from, say, the US, other than the speed of transformation, are the conditions of the "discussion," if you will. By that I mean in the United States the vacuum is filled by an open, recordable, dialectical process - what you call the "Culture War." It's there, it's out there, it's leaving a record, it's open to scrutiny, and you can see the many sides try to vie for superiority.

I think the effort to fill the vacuum is different in China. That open, confrontational discursive element is highly diminished - not absent, of course, but subdued. Secondly, while the role of Communism as the guiding principle of the Chinese nation-state is obviously weakening, the fact that one organization, the Communist Party, claims on paper to have a monopoly on the guiding principles also has a huge effect on the soul-searching effort. Communism per se may be looking more and more like a dinosaur but the CCP is still a major playing in cultivating a "new Confucianism" as a national ideology (as hollow or insubstantial as such claims may be).

I'd like to hear your thoughts.

[Sam]

You're right. Political conditions in China are more restrictive and that matters, to a degree.
What I found during my recent trip (I'm home now, past my jet lag but behind in all of my work) was a mixed reaction to my suggestion that "China is no longer a Confucian society." Some people agreed with that notion (most notably a woman about my age who suggested that Confucianism granted little or no space for individual dignity) and some people disagreed (most notably a younger Chinese student who went off on me about how I basically misunderstood China and Confucianism). There was no discernible pattern to the agreement and disagreement, no clear generation or gender breakdown. But what I did notice was a fairly relaxed attitude in coming to a position of the question. Whatever the role of the state in policing certain aspects of cultural discourse, it is not so great, in my view, as to clearly distort the conversation on Confucianism in any particular direction.
From this I would provisionally conclude that the question of Confucianism is likely a rather low priority for the state. It is useful in a diffuse sort of way, but other issues - the value of the Renminbi, the myriad challenges of maintaining growth - are of much greater importance in terms of the legitimacy of the Party state.